Elizabeth Dee Gallery Is Moving to Harlem

It is still a long way from being the new Chelsea, or the new Lower East Side, or even the new Brooklyn. But Harlem is starting to gain speed as a new gallery district. The Elizabeth Dee Gallery, which has operated in Chelsea for 15 years and has represented sought-after artists like Ryan Trecartin, Adrian Piper and the collective Leo Gabin, announced that it is moving to a new space on Fifth Avenue between East 125th and East 126th Streets in May.

The two-story, 12,000-square-foot space, which served as the first home of the Studio Museum in Harlem in the late 1960s and is next door to the National Black Theater, will more than quadruple the gallery’s current exhibition space, Ms. Dee said, allowing it to mount more ambitious exhibitions and performances.

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Elizabeth DeeCreditFred R. Conrad/The New York Times

“There’s been a conversation in New York for at least the last five years about where galleries will be able to move, to decentralize from Chelsea,” said Ms. Dee, who has lived in Harlem for four years. “And I think Harlem is such a dynamic place. The neighborhoods are so economically diverse and racially diverse, and they make you start to think about your audience in a different way — an audience rooted in African-American culture, of course, but also one of many kinds of demographics.”

And Ms. Dee, a founder of the Independent art fair, said she has had discussions over the past two years with as many as 20 other Chelsea galleries that have been interested in finding space in Harlem. “Out of those 20, I’d estimate that 10 are actively looking now for space in Harlem, either as a move or to establish a second gallery location,” she said, declining to identify the galleries. “There’s a large number of people from the art world, a highly international group, who live in Harlem, and I think galleries are going to begin to follow.”